19 March 2014

Sequencing the museum-maze photos

With over 50 photos chosen, and the file organised in photo-number order rather than in any way corresponding to the museum itself ... where to start?

At the entrance - that page was easy enough to put together, but it quickly became apparent that some sort of system was needed. The photos needed to be grouped by type of floor so that they could make some sort of sense, should anyone actually "read" the book.

First I tried putting them on the Desktop, in order to be able to move them around manually - but found they were too small to see! -

Next bright idea: put them in a folder, fiddle around with icon size to make it all fit on the screen, hit the PrtSc key, go into Photoshop to put the screengrab into a new file, and print out, with the photo numbers underneath.

Fitted onto one page, again it was too small to work from -

More fiddling around with screen size to get the icons large enough, and then printed out on four sheets of paper -

The missing file numbers added manually ... the sheets cut up ... the images already used taken out, and those left arranged by type of floor -

...then put into sequence for each page, and the images numbered by page and position, and these numbers written onto the page of thumbnails -

... and as a check, each page was given a colour and the thumbnails colour-coded. I got to use my neglected Prismacolour pencils (love their waxiness) -

Next step: moving the correct photos onto the right page, in the right orientation.

It quickly becomes apparent that instead of cropping the photos to 1600 pixels by 800 pixels, I should have cropped them to the measurements of the boxes on the InDesign page 160mm x 80mm. Duh. This could have saved a lot of resizing!

But then I discovered that you can use a previous version of the "filled" template [remember to save it with a new file name first!] and Ctl+D to "place" each new photo. Clicking on where you want the photo, then "placing" it, magically makes it the right size and orientation!

With the colour-coded sheet of thumbnails, finding the right photos and putting them onto the page is going quickly.

Tuesday is Drawing Day - why not join in, wherever you are? Find somewhere that has interesting things - it needn't be a museum, it could be your own home! - and just draw, using whatever media you want. Ask some friends to join you, then have a nice lunch.

The London group has grown to the point where it's getting difficult to find a cafe table large enough, and reluctantly I must say that it is no longer open to new members.